Inkjet Printing of a Micro/Nanopatterned Surface to Serve as Microreactor Arrays

Microreactors are of great importance for chemical reaction screening, nanoparticle synthesis, protein crystallization, DNA detection, organic synthesis, etc. Here, we reported an effective, flexible, and low-cost method for fabricating microreactor arrays by inkjet printing technology. This strategy utilizes the controllable sliding behavior of the three-phase contact line to form hydrophilic-hydrophobic micropatterns for microreactors with sizes low to several hundreds of nanometers. Reactions in the order of 1 × 10^-21 mol molecules can be realized in these microreactors, and crystallization processes can also be conducted to synthesize single crystals.